WHOA: Look what we discovered about man suing Trump over travel ban

As we reported the other day, Hawaii was quick to pounce on President Donald Trump’s revised executive order re-implementing his 90-day travel ban from six countries this time (minus Iraq), and halting all refugee resettlement for 120-days instead of just Syrian refugees.

We now know (as our friends at Young Conservatives reported today), Seattle U.S. District Court Judge James Robart, who issued the temporary restraining order against Trump’s initial order last month, refused a request on Friday to apply that order to the revised policy according to Reuters.

So Hawaii might be up the creek for now — however what still bears noting is who was behind the state’s suit.

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The plaintiff listed on the state’s lawsuit against the executive order is Dr. Ismail Elshikh, who is the imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii. Undoubtedly he’s among those viewing this executive order as a “Muslim ban,” even though it doesn’t effect 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population, and only lasts four months.

According to some careful research from Conservative Review’s Jordan Schachtel, Imam Elshikh is a member of the North American Imam Federation (NAIF), a fringe Islamic organization that has a board and current leadership stacked with radical Islamic connections.

Kyle Shideler, a terrorism expert and director of the Threat Information Office at the Center for Security Policy, tells CR that it’s concerning that Imam Elshikh is a part of NAIF.

Who makes up NAIF? Let’s just take a look at their current leadership. There’s Omar Shahin, a current board member who was the former president of the Islamic Center of Tucson, a mosque that was once used as a “de-facto” headquarters for Al-Qaeda in the U.S. Then there’s Dr. Waleed Meneese, another NAIF board member who has called for his fellow Muslims to kill Jews. He stated in a sermon that “When the Children of Israel returned to cause corruption in the time of our Prophet Muhammad,” Meneese said in a recent sermon. “And they disbelieved him, God destroyed him at his hand. In any case, God Almighty has promised them destruction whenever they cause corruption.” He’d also like apostates killed too. Another former NAIF board member is Siraj Wahhaj, who was infamously listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

“Given NAIF’s history it should come as no surprise that the end goal of this lawsuit is, ultimately, weakening American counter-terrorism or immigration security efforts,” Shideler said.

He added: “That a member of an organization whose leaders have included a convicted war criminal, an individual who defended donating money to a Hamas linked charity, and an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism bombing wants to tell the American people who they can admit for immigration should say a lot about why such an executive order is needed in the first place.”

So – about as reputable as CAIR.

As for more info on Elshikh, he received his PhD from the Graduate Theological Foundation Islamic Studies Department, which is headed by Shahin. The program was created in collaboration with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that was started as a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

The well-intentioned liberals opposing Trump’s executive order have rallied under the “no ban, no wall” banner. What is the rallying cry of those like Elshikh? “Potential Islamists against the ban?”

[Note: This post was authored by Matt Palumbo. Follow him on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]

Meet Allen West

Allen West was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia in the same neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once preached. He is the third of four generations of military servicemen in his family.

During his 22 year career in the United States Army, Lieutenant Colonel West served in several combat zones: in Operation Desert Storm, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was a Battalion Commander in the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and later in Afghanistan.